The Blues and Avs followed similar blueprints to become elite teams; could that mean the Jets are next?

Winnipeg Jets' Blake Wheeler (26) (centre) celebrates with his team after scoring against the Colorado Avalanche for the win in NHL overtime action in Winnipeg on Wednesday, March 19, 2014.

The right here, right now small picture for the Winnipeg Jets is crystal clear, especially with their playoff chances still very much on life support.

The focus is singularly directed at the Carolina Hurricanes, who pay a visit here on Saturday in the last of a 10-game stretch that has seen eight games played at the MTS Centre.

Next week it's off to Dallas, then San Jose, Los Angeles, Anaheim and Phoenix for a chunk of games that will effectively define the 2013-14 season. Sportsclubstats.com crunched the numbers and even if the Jets were to go 9-2 in their last 11, their chances of advancing to the Stanley Cup derby are still only 42.6 per cent.

Yowza.

But while so many eyes are fixated on the current chase, the past two games now in the rear-view mirror against Western Conference heavyweights St. Louis and Colorado have also offered up a chance to compare and contrast and ask a basic question:

How did the Blues and Avs get to the elite and are the Jets on the right path to do the same?

Consider, first, some similarities in circumstance:

After making the playoffs for 25 straight years from 1979-80 to 2005-06, the Blues then missed the party in five of the next six seasons from 2005-06 through 2010-11.

The Avs have missed the playoffs over the last three seasons, and posted the second-worst record in the NHL in two of those campaigns.

The Jets, meanwhile, are in a six-year playoff drought dating back to 2006-07 and the franchise's days in Atlanta.

And that, in many ways, represents the Jets' current dilemma as a franchise: trying to preach the patience of their draft-and-develop blueprint to a fan base that hasn't seen playoff hockey in two years here -- and likely a third barring an act of God and a handful of miracles.

"I understand the path we're taking to get from here to there," said Jets coach Paul Maurice this week. "Pieces will change here, players will mature. (St. Louis) is a different team even than they were two or three years ago when (coach) Ken (Hitchcock) first came in. They worked hard, but they had different pieces. Their back end now has changed and is better.

"There's a bunch of different things... T.J. Oshie is quite a different player than he was two years ago. There's a lot of stuff that has changed there."

"Somebody asked me, 'What's your vision for this team? Is it Boston?' We'd be more of a version of what St. Louis can do," added Maurice. "I like those teams that are willing to finish their checks and play hard. I'm not asking certain players to be running around, but if you're that big and you're that fast you can get to the hit. That's the game we want to play in this building."

Those around the NHL will insist the Jets are in a far better position as an organization than when the franchise relocated. And while the playoff drought still has many parched, there is some truth to that.

Winnipeg's affiliates are stocked with more talent than when the keys to the Thrashers were handed over and the record over the last three years here -- 93-86-22 -- is slightly superior to the final three years in Atlanta, when the team went 104-111-31.

And as we look at how the Blues and Avs were built in comparison to the Jets (see accompanying chart) here are some observations:

The Blues (11), Jets (10) and Avs (nine) all have a similar number of their own draft picks on their rosters.

All three teams have been busy adding pieces via trade, with the Jets' roster featuring 10 players acquired through swaps with the Blues and Avs at eight each.

St. Louis GM Doug Armstrong doesn't get nearly enough credit for his savvy moves. And his trade-deadline deal that brought Ryan Miller and Steve Ott has pushed the Blues closer to their first Stanley Cup championship than ever before.

While the deal GM Kevin Cheveldayoff made for Michael Frolik last summer has been a boon for the Jets, the moves impacting the current roster the most were made before the team located here with Mark Stuart and Blake Wheeler coming from Boston in the same deal in 2011 and Andrew Ladd and Dustin Byfuglien arriving in two deals with Chicago a week apart in 2010.

Really sucking for awhile helped transform the Avs, who were able to grab Nathan MacKinnon, Matt Duchene and Gabriel Landeskog with top-five picks.

Colorado's unheralded free-agent acquisitions last July -- Nick Holden, Nate Guenin and Andre Benoit -- have been important depth additions to a roster already loaded with skill.

So, what does all this prove? Well, nothing concrete, frankly, other than no blueprint is infallible and that Blues and Avs fans -- who did more than their fair share of suffering over the past few years -- can settle in for some dandy playoff action beginning next month.

Jets fans, meanwhile, can only cross their fingers and hope they're next.

ed.tait@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @WFPEdTait

THREE NHL TEAM BLUEPRINTS

A look at how the rosters of the Jets, Avalanche and Blues were put together:

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